Marquess of Queensberry Rules, OK?

A good clean fight?

Acknowledgements to the BNP Ideas web site

The Attitude of BNP Factions towards Each Other

Posted by admin02 on 18 January, 2012

By Andrew Brons

It is well known that different cohorts of former activists have gone in different directions (the British Freedom Party, the English Democrats, Britain First/the National People’s Party, the National Front, the Democratic Nationalists, the Freedom Democrats and perhaps others) and each faction, as you would expect, disapproves of the chosen destination of each of the others.

Whilst we should not be sparing in our criticism of the parties or the decisions of with which we disapprove, there are good reasons for stopping short of universal character assassination of all of the individuals with whom we differ.

The only certainty that emerges from all of the mess in which the Nationalist Movement is currently wallowing, is that the vast majority of the activists that we had in 2010 must return to work under one party roof or the Nationalist Movement will fail for all time. Let there be no doubt about that. Any friction that will inhibit people from working with each other must be avoided.

Of course, it is tempting for people to agree with all of the aforesaid and conclude that everybody else must come to his or her senses and join them in whichever party they have chosen.

Indeed, I have been lobbied to form yet another break-away party, which everybody will want to join because of my overwhelming charisma, film star good looks and oratorical skills. The idea that my personal magnetism might be less than completely effective does not occur to them. The conclusion that I would simply have created a seventh (or is that eighth) faction fighting for a seventh or should that be an eighth fraction of the BNP has, so far, eluded them.

The need for an umbrella organisation that former BNP activists might join, without giving up their newly-found membership of their chosen party, is simply too difficult for some to grasp. Whilst the creation or membership of yet another micro-party doomed to failure, is seen as decisive, a serious and reasoned attempt to seek unification as a pre-condition, is derided as dithering and weakness. The problem with some sections of the Nationalist Movement is that thought and reason are seen as objects of suspicion and perhaps evidence of weakness or even effeminacy.

I have recently been criticised for working too hard to advance the Nationalist cause in the European Parliament and seeking to establish that Nationalists elected to public office are worthy of being elected and are capable of performing in that role. Nationalists are frequently criticised by our opponents for failing to speak, failing to attend and resigning before the end of their elected term. Naming names would serve no purpose and would only inhibit future co-operation.

When I was interviewed to be a candidate for the British National Party, I was asked by a member of the panel (who was not a member of the Party) whether I would, if elected, serve my full elected term. I promised that I would. I was not asked if I would attend regularly and contribute to debates but I took that as read. I was certainly not asked, by any of the panel, to give a pledge that I would attend only a couple of meetings and then absent myself, so that I could flee to an island retreat.

I was not asked to assure the panel members that I would help the Party to fragment by helping the leadership to drive activists out of the Party or by seeking membership of one of the nomadic groups to flee from its clutches.

I have been described as somebody whose previous political activity was restricted to “a brief stint in the 1980s when I was involved in the internal splits in the NF”. My first serious political activity was in 1965, with John Bean’s British National Party and then (when that Party merged with the League of Empire Loyalists in 1967) with the National Front until that Party changed its name to the National Democratic Party in 1995. I was on the National Directorate of the NF from 1974 until 1988. I remained a member of that Party until about 1999. I joined the BNP in 2005. People who remember me from my activity in the 1960s, 70s and 80s will remember that I always tried to prevent splits; I did not cause any.

I do not know how precisely the problems of the Nationalist Movement will be resolved but I do know that unity of our 2010 activists is a pre-condition for that resolution. It will be necessary for all or most of our 2010 activists eventually to find a home in the same party. I do not know whether that will be within an existing party or a new one. My ideal was that unity could have been achieved within the British National Party but the chances of that solution are receding quickly.

I do not know for certain which people will be the leading lights of a unified party. Indeed, it would be wrong to prejudge the will of the future membership. It is the duty of all of us to carry out the roles, however small, that are allotted to us; it is not our job to appoint ourselves to lead imaginary parties.

Unprovoked, vicious and groundless attacks, such as the recent one that was launched against one of my colleagues, are not part of the solution; they are the heart of the problem. People who are motivated by personal hatreds and class resentments have no part to play in the battle for our Nation.

COMMENTS

doc savage

says:

January 18, 2012 at 10:47 pm

It is clear that what Andrew is saying here is the only truly sensible way forward. I myself have dipped a toe into at least 2 of the small newly formed BNP splinter parties. And have subsequently seen the folly first hand of this way forward. The arguements don’t end, the respective ego’s battle like ferrets in a sack. All trying to out-do one another.

We have a far bigger fight to attend to. Our cause is all that matters, our nation and our people are where our energies should be directed.

If we choose ever more splintering and disintergration then the only winners are our liberal, socialist enemies.

It’s time to choose a united front for once and this is that oppotunity.

New Leadership's response to Andrew Brons' article

First of all, it's good to see that the rumours of the demise of BNP Ideas were greatly exaggerated.  To all the doubters and detractors, I shall not be so mean-spirited as to say "I told you so".  No, perish the thought.

It's quite clear that Andrew has assessed the situation accurately and has prescribed the only remedy that is remotely likely to succeed in restoring the body politic of nationalism to a healthy state.

Andrew is an educated man and has spent most of his career within an academic environment.  He expresses himself rather like a tutor holding a seminar.  He is discursive, allusive, he drops hints and makes donnish jokes.  None of this is meant as a condemnation of his style.  We all have our foibles and our own personal style, after all.

But it should be remembered that he is not addressing an audience of students of politics or law.  The people whom he is addressing, nationalists, are primarily men of a certain age and experience.  They are more men of action than of ideas, I think it would be fair to say.  Many of them are not of an academic bent and never have been.  They tend to be of a practical turn of mind, more than they are given to abstract theorizing and speculation.

I think this partly explains the impatience and criticism with which Andrew's strategy of unification via nationalist co-operation has been met.  Rather than remembering the truth of the saying "They also serve who only stand and wait" many nationalists have, quite wrongly, attributed Andrew's waiting to a pusillanimity and an indecisiveness of which he is, in reality, not guilty.

As practical men, many nationalists want to be a-doing.  They measure success in terms of activity.  The trouble is that, as Games theory shows us, when many are engaged in the same activity, the activities of each can often cancel out the activities of others.  That is the situation in which nationalism now finds itself. The activities of each of the would-be successors to the BNP's title of premier nationalist party cancel out the activities of the others, in the eyes of the disaffected bulk of the BNP's former membership, as also in the eyes of the electorate.

For nationalism to regain credibility in the eyes of the electorate, as in the eyes of its disaffected former adherents, it must reverse the process of fission which it has undergone over the last eighteen months and begin a sustained process of fusion.

As I have said, many nationalists are temperamentally averse to this proposal and find the notion of patiently and unadventurously working for inter-party co-operation and understanding unpalatable.

They would much rather be taking part in a cavalry charge against the Russian guns.  Well, the outcome of such a charge is sadly only too predictable, but perhaps it has to happen before cooler heads will be allowed to have their way.